


Smothered Destinies

by Overcome_Undone



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: Bad Ending, Corruption, Emotional Manipulation, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Mind Control, Smoking, World of Ruin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2020-09-06 10:33:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20290015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Overcome_Undone/pseuds/Overcome_Undone
Summary: After the world-shaking cataclysm at the Floating Continent, Celes awakens in the seemingly malevolent hands of a dilettante sorceress. Exhausted and separated from her friends, Celes is tempted with a new fate prepared just for her.





	1. Chapter 1

“I wondered if you would survive.”

The general returned uneasily to consciousness. She heard the other woman’s voice and cracked open her eyes to see the other woman’s smiling face.

Amused, groomed, the woman looked dressed for high society. Her sheer, saffron gown and opera gloves contrasted with the candlelit, stone oubliette they shared. The general shifted, and felt the creak of the water-damaged bench that served as her bed.

“Who are you?”

The other woman made a satisfied noise in the back of her throat, closing the distance between them with the smart clack-clack of heeled shoes.

“You came here unconscious, floating on driftwood. It’s a wonder you didn’t drown.” The woman held a wand at an angle, shoulder-height, between her first two fingers. It smoldered - no, the general realized, it was a cigarette holder. Of all things.

“You don’t look like the portraits of you… General.”

The general pressed her chin to her chest, and confessed the woman was right. Dried mud saturated her ruined breeches. Her blonde hair trailed into filthy, brown, matted points. Her blade -

Her blade!

“Where is my sword?” the general said, panic fighting through bone-deep weakness. The other woman laughed.

“It’s over there,” she told the general, gesturing with her cigarette holder. The general blinked to focus her eyes. She could see the gleam of the Runic Blade, slotted with cabochon-cut magicite.

The general tried to rise. The other woman curled her fingers into claws, pressing her nails into the softness under the general’s near shoulder.

“Shhh,” the woman said, while her nails bit into flesh. The general - who had stood against armies and beasts, who had submitted eagerly to a Magitek infusion that could have scrambled her brains - whimpered.

“Don’t move,” the woman said, bearing down, forcing the general to lie flat. The general hissed out a breath, body trying to curl into the pain.

“You’re too weak,” the woman said. “You couldn’t lift the blade anyway.” She punctuated this with a lingering draw on her cigarette holder.

“Is this a ransom?” the general said, baring her teeth. She lay still on the rotted wood bench, unresisting but determined to show she would not be undone. The other woman sighed plumes of smoke from her nose, merrily stabbing into pressure points with her nails.

“Who would I ransom you to?” she said, then smiled wide at the general’s confusion. “How long have you been... incapacitated? Do you think the Empire still exists? Or the Returners? It’s everyone for themselves, now.”

“My friends- I need to find them,” the general said. She raised her knees, as if to stand, and the woman stabbed merrily into the general’s shoulder with her nails. The general hissed out a pained noise, defying her captor until her strength gave out and she lay flat again. At last, the woman relented.

“Good girl,” she said. “Your friends aren’t here. It’s just you and it’s just me.” She pouts. “No one comes to visit me from the city any more. It’s no fun. I had thought of leaving this old place to find out why… and then you washed ashore.”

The general watched the woman’s contemplative draw on her cigarette holder. The woman must be high society - or must have been, before the first, mad Magitek Knight broke the world. She was probably insane, the general decided.

“I have to get out of here,” the general said. “Please give me my sword.”

The woman exhaled smoke down into the general’s face, a long, scornful sound, the corners of her pursed lips turned up into a smirk. The general’s eyes stung, and she coughed.

“No,” the woman said. “You’d make short work of me with a Runic Blade. None of my magic would work on you. Without your sword? Well…”

The woman turned and sat, unceremoniously, on the general’s belly. The wind flew out of the general in a faint wheeze. Her mouth opened in an “o” while she gasped in shallow breaths.

The woman tsked. “Your hair is filthy,” she said, raising her cigarette holder for another languid puff. The cigarette flared red… as did dozens of fine-etched runes along the holder’s length. The general’s first impression had not been entirely wrong - it was a wand, of sorts.

The sorceress pressed her palm against the general’s forehead, brushing aside matted, filthy hair.

“Drain,” the sorceress said, through an expanding cloud of smoke.

The weakness and cold that had settled in her bones quivered at the word. It surged, nestled into her muscles, made a home there, made her numb. Her gasping took on a ragged edge. The general’s guttering vitality flowed into the sorceress’s fingers, up her arm.

The sorceress giggled. “So warm,” she said.

“Why are you doing this to me?” the general said, her voice wavering.

“Because I can,” the sorceress said, wiggling her butt, pressing down harder on her captive. The general watched the cigarette holder lift again, watched it glimmer again.

“You have to let me go!” the general said. “Please-”

“Drain.”

The sorceress leaned closer. She breathed a languid plume of smoke into the general’s face while the spell leached away her captive’s life. She could see little swirls and disturbances in the haze as the general’s frantic breathing tugged the poisoned air into her own lungs.

Out of the corner of her eye, the sorceress saw sympathetic traceries of teal light crawl over the Runic Blade.

“Oh, it wants to help you,” the sorceress said, her voice oozing with false sympathy. “It wouldn’t even be a close fight in any other circumstances. I’m more of a dilettante than a dedicated mage.” She waved her cigarette holder, tracing dainty spirals of smoke in the thickening air. “Certainly I’d be no match for a Magitek Knight, much less one with a sword to seal away my little spells.”

“And yet,” she said, with a savage grin, “here we are.”

“Please let me go,” the general said, a smothered murmur.

“I don’t think that would be very wise for me,” the sorceress said. “I think you’d lunge for your sword and cut me down. I think you’d go find your friends and come back to take your revenge. That’s what I’d do if I were you.”

“Please,” the general said, on the edge of a sob.

The general saw the woman’s radiant smile, heard her pleased purr. She saw the cigarette and its holder flare with another slow, triumphant puff. She saw the sorceress lean so close, face to face, lips fuming, her long, brown hair falling to one side like a confession booth curtain.

“Draaaaaaiiiiinnnnnn,” the sorceress crooned, pouring the smoke-thick word into the general’s face.

The vampiric magic sank greedily into the general’s body and pulled from her in great draughts.

The general lost consciousness. The last thing she remembered was her captor's gloating lips parted, wreathing her in soft poison.


	2. Chapter 2

When she resurfaced, the general found she could breathe again. She shivered, still cold and weak. She became aware of brighter light. It felt like the sun, before the world broke.

The light shone through a haze of smoke.

“Welcome back,” said the sorceress.

The general realized with a shock that her head rested in the sorceress’s lap. The general looked up in time to feel another pillow of smoke flowing from her captor’s smirking lips. The general blinked as the gentle toxins stung her eyes, but did not cough.

“Feeling better?” The sorceress made an expansive gesture with her cigarette holder.

The general did not. She shifted, but could not so much as sit upright. And no wonder she felt cold -- the sorceress had discarded the general’s mud-ruined clothes, trading them in for a form-hugging, one-piece garment that bared her arms, legs and the top of her chest.

Gone, too were the mats and tangles in the general’s hair. It shone like it did during their ridiculous gambit at the opera house by Jidoor. She smiled briefly at the memory, then returned to her predicament.

She was trapped -- though her prison wore a far more appealing face. The oubliette was gone. She rested on a stone bench under the shade of a tree in a walled garden. Clouds drifted overhead.

“This is an illusion,” the general said. “How much of it is an illusion?”

The sorceress only laughed, tapping her cigarette holder before drawing it to her lips for another contemplative puff. The only warmth the general felt came from the sorceress, from her lap and her poison exhalations.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Just enjoy it.”

“Enjoy? You tried to kill me!” Fresh anger gave the general a brief surge of vitality. She sat up, though it made her stomach lurch. She saw the sorceress’s eyes widen -

The sorceress slapped the general full across the face.

Her cheek burned. Shock gave way to stinging pain-

The sorceress slapped her other cheek with a backhand hard enough to draw tears.

“Lie back down,” the sorceress said. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

She struck the general’s face with her open hand once more, then clasped her gloved hand around the general’s throat.

The general had time to breathe out a meek, “Ah,” and then the sorceress squeezed, forcing the general back down to recline in her lap once more.

“That’s much better,” the sorceress said. “Now listen to me.”

“No, I-”

The words died with another squeeze. The general croaked, mouth wide, lifting her hands to the sorceress’s wrist. She saw the sorceress lift her cigarette holder for another malevolent puff. Runes shone along its length.

“Shhh,” the sorceress said, a gentle susurrus accompanying a cascade of smoke into the general’s face. She released the general’s throat, and her captor drew in an involuntary gasp of poison. The general’s brows knitted into an indignant, bent line. She opened her mouth-

No sound came out. She tried to speak again.

Silence.

“Better still,” the sorceress said, lips curling into an impish smile.

The general wept fresh tears, frustrated beyond reason to be in the power of such a pampered amateur. If she had her sword, she said, she’d take the soft dilettante’s head in a heartbeat.

Except she didn’t. Her lips shaped the words, but no sound came out.

“You should stop trying. No one can hear you.”

The general pressed her mouth into a tight line.

“There’s a good girl,” the sorceress purred. The general’s cheeks, already flushed from tooth-rattling slaps, burned brighter still.

“Now,” the sorceress said. “Listen to me.”

The general waited and listened. She could do little else. The sorceress rewarded her with a delighted smile.

“Believe it or not, I have something to offer you,” the sorceress said. “If I wanted to kill you, I could have.”

The general wrinkled her nose, as if to say,  _ How selfless, do you want an award?  _ But the sorceress ignored her.

“I have something to offer you, and you have something I want. I want company,” the sorceress said. “There is no more high society. There is barely a society, General Chere. Just towns and cities, keeping their heads down, trying to escape the Light of Judgement. It’s everyone for themselves.”

The sorceress paused for a meditative puff, speaking through a nimbus of smoke. “It’s not going to be like it was, General. The world can’t be helped. No more salons and play parties for me. No more magic lessons. Just this old place, and whatever I can seize.”

The sorceress left her hand on the general’s abused throat, but exerted only the faintest pressure. The general felt the glove’s soft velvet press into her flesh.

“I want company. I want to play with you, General. You came to me practically gift-wrapped. But I can offer you something too: an escape from the stage of history.”

The general squinted up at her captor.  _ What?  _ She formed the word with her mouth, forgetting the magic that stole her voice.

“You tried really hard, didn’t you?” the sorceress said. The gloved hand slid away from the general’s throat, trailing across her cheek, index finger brushing behind her ear. “When Gestahl lifted the Floating Continent… you and your friends gave it your all. You can’t imagine what we felt when we heard. The defiant general, risking everything she had built for herself to stop a madman.”

The general’s eyes squeezed shut, freeing more tears.

“You came so close, Celes Chere. But you failed.” The words seemed to settle into the general like lead weights. After watching Cid waste away, she thought she had no more tears to shed. The sorceress watched the general’s face crumple into a mask of agony, sobbing soundlessly. She continued to speak, her voice soft.

“And you lost so much. It’s all right.” The sorceress soothed the general’s cheek. In spite of everything, the general leaned gratefully into the touch, wracked with fresh grief.

“You can’t change what happened. You couldn’t stop what was bound to happen. Look what it cost you to try.” The sorceress spoke in a soft, consoling tone. She soothed the general’s hair while she cried. Her words drew pain from the general as surely as did her hands and spells. The general’s tears disappeared into the fabric of the sorceress’s velvet gloves.

“You are so heavy with despair, general. If you stay with me, if you play with me, you can put that weight down.” The sorceress used no enticing magic, only her touch and the sound of her voice, still soft, now thrumming with possibility.

“You can escape from the stage of history, Celes Chere. The ruined world remembers that you fought so valiantly, resisted the Empire with such ardor.” The sorceress brushed her hand over the general’s brow. “Can you live up to that example? Are you the same woman you were before the Floating Continent fell?”

The general hiccuped silently and wept. She thought of herself with her comrades-at-arms - infiltrating, daring, defying death. She remembered the great, crashing explosion that ended it all. The sorceress paused for another languid draw on her cigarette through her holder. The general heard the soft pop as the sorceress filled her lungs, then sighed a toxic fog carelessly out through her nostrils, pillowing against the general’s face once more. The general breathed the smoke in quiet misery, no longer bothering to flinch away from the sorceress’s casual cruelty.

“You can’t do it,” the sorceress said, the words sliding into her captive like a venomed blade. “You can’t inspire anyone to resist when you are so full of despair. Imagine the people who heard the legend of the rebel general. Imagine if they saw you now.”

Residual grey wisps danced around the sorceress’s lips as she continued, relentless. “You can’t live up to who you were. All you would carry into the world is more despair, general. You’re diminished, lost. You’ve lost.”

_ Lost,  _ the general shaped the word with her lips. The sorceress smiled, caressed her captive’s cheek.

“Lost,” the sorceress echoed. “You lost. You are lost. You are lossst. You are so heavy with despair, poisoned with it. You can’t even stand.”

_ No. _ The general turned her head, and the sorceress’s cupped hand was ready to cradle it.

“Lost,” the sorceress breathed, barely a whisper.

The general’s lips twitched, but she shaped no word in response. There was no point. She could not make a sound.

“That’s it. Good. Just… feel it. Feel how heavy you are. So heavy and lost,” the sorceress said.

The general closed her eyes. The sorceress’s smile widened, and a wicked light glinted in her eyes.

“I can give you a way out. You don’t have to feel so heavy, Celes Chere.” She tapped her cigarette holder, trimming ash carelessly. “You don’t have to feel this way.”

The sorceress leaned in. “You’ve given the world the memory of who you were. You’ve given more than anyone should. Let the world have that unspoiled memory.”

The general felt the sorceress’s breath against her ear.

“Give the rest of yourself to me,” the sorceress said.

The general’s lips twitched again, a word trying to surface. The sorceress squeezed the general’s neck again. Her captive’s eyes flew open. She lifted a hand to the sorceress’s arm --

\-- and merely held it, a light touch, not trying to pry away the sorceress’s choking grasp.

“You have to mean it,” the sorceress said, her voice sharp. “No tricks. If you surrender, I will give you peace. And I will never, ever let you go.”

The general’s lungs began to burn. Greyness coiled in the periphery of her vision. But her survival instinct labored under the thick mud of despair. She waited in magically-enforced silence, dully watching cigarette and holder flare in another puff.

“Do you understand?” The sorceress’s hand slid up, freeing the general’s abused windpipe only to clamp into her jaw. She leaned in, a finger’s length separating them from a kiss. She breathed a sharp plume of havoc into the general’s face, into her open mouth as she gasped for air. Smoke filled her nose, burned her throat, filled her lungs, stung her eyes.

The general accepted the abuse, gasping down breath after punishing breath. The sorceress saw wisps of smoke stream out of the general’s mouth after cycling through her still-unconditioned lungs.

“Do you understand?” The sorceress said again. The general blinked slowly in the baleful atmosphere swirling around her head. The general nodded.

“Good girl,” the sorceress crooned, brushing a lock of hair from the general’s cheek. “Now. Do you surrender to me?”

The two of them stared at each other, their faces inches apart, the general’s head still cradled in the sorceress’s lap.

The general nodded again.

“I’ll ask you again,” the sorceress said. She traced an arabesque, occult shape on the general’s neck, releasing the magic that silenced her captive. “Do you surrender?”

“Yes,” the general said. The sorceress leaned back and slapped the general’s face.

“Yes, what? Tell. Me,” the sorceress said, her voice sharp, her last two words punctuated with more slaps. The general’s cheeks glowed with heat and humiliation.

“I surrender,” the general said, in a wavering voice.

“Do you? Tell me what you want,” the sorceress said.

“I… don’t want to feel like this anymore,” the general said.

“Ah,” came the response.

“Everything is wrong, and I feel it in me, like I want to throw it all up. Everything has gone wrong, and I tried, and…”

“You did,” the sorceress said, her voice a golden, envenomed pin thrust deftly into soft skin.

“...I’m so tired of it,” the general said. “I… if I saw my friends, I couldn’t face them. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t fight anymore.”

“You won’t have to, I promise,” the sorceress hissed.

“Please. I want to rest. It feels like forever since I could rest. It hurts so much to carry this.”

“And you’ll surrender to me?” The sorceress said.

“I will,” the general said. “I’ll surrender. I can’t fight anymore. I want to rest.”

The sorceress smiled, soothing the general’s brow, brushing away her hair. “You’ll never be free again, do you understand?”

“I do,” the general said.

“I will keep what’s left of you,” the sorceress said. “I will diminish you. I’ll take from you. I’ll hurt you, because I want to.”

“I… understand,” the general said, more quietly.

“I will enslave you,” the sorceress said. “I will fill your mind. You’ll choke on my power over you as long as you live.”

“I don’t care,” the general said. “Please, I surrender.”

“Then take this token of my love,” the sorceress purred, leaning down. She kissed the general’s forehead. The general felt the soft warmth of her touch, felt the stirring of the spell behind the kiss. She understood, through her Magitek infusion, what the spell would do to her. It was a fragile enchantment, like smoke hanging in the still air, trivially easy for a mage of real power to dispel.

The general made no move against it.


	3. Chapter 3

The sorceress’s lips lingered on the general’s brow. The general felt its fragile lines of power - she imagined they were pink, or perhaps golden - spreading under the kiss. Spreading, spreading, like frost on glass. Subtle fingers traced around the circumference of her head. Spreading, until they met at the base of her skull, tying together, ribbons around a gift.

The general lay so still and so quiet.

The general felt the warm tide of the sorceress’s breath in her hair while she held the binding kiss. More soft, wicked ribbons crept around her mind, airy and insubstantial over the heaviness of despair and dulled grief at the general’s core. Even now, a focused movement of will would cut through the spell. It was an amateur’s trick.

The general felt it form a lattice around her mind. Slowly, so slowly. Her breathing slowed to match the sorceress’s.

And then, as she knew it would, a new ribbon of the spell crept - not around her mind, but inside. It spread from the contact point of the sorceress’s warm kiss, dipping through flesh, through bone, touching the grey sea of the general’s mind.

Penetrating it.

“Ah,” the general said.

Lost and storm-tossed, Celes Chere was still a Magitek Knight. At her lowest point, she still possessed the inviolate center that helped her survive the infusion process. After she had lost everything else, she still had this foundation, hard under the sea of despair. She felt the ribbon of the sorceress’s spell touch that foundation and hesitate. Without a conscious effort, her soul pushed back. The light, pastel pink-gold of the questing tendril turned iron grey.

The two women were at an impasse. With the slightest pressure, the general could push her foundation through the spell, turning all the ribbons grey, forcing the sorceress’s influence to crack and flake away.

Captor and captive remained still in a tableau of silence - the general, propped up, lying against, her head lolling back and long, blonde hair trailing into the sorceress’s lap. The sorceress, holding the kiss against the general’s forehead like a blessing, one arm catching her captive in a half-embrace, one hand posing her cigarette holder at an elegant angle, trailing lazy spirals of smoke that hung around them.

Stillness, impasse. The two women, balanced perfectly on the fulcrum of Celes Chere’s next move.

The general did nothing. She felt the sorceress’s lips curl into a slow smile.

Fraction by fraction, the grey ribbon regained its color. The glimmer pulsed farther and farther down the length of the line of magic. The grey ceded ground, inch by inch, yielding until it retreated fully.

The ribbon pushed deeper, under the surface. It licked at the merest crack in the general’s foundation. It found purchase and penetrated.

Compromised.

The general felt the first stirrings of the enchantment. The world around her seemed to dim by degrees, while the sorceress loomed in the foreground. More prominent, more important.

The spell’s subtle ribbon curled deeper. Soft, so soft, it softened the cracks in the foundation at the general’s core. It softened and it ate, a single, pink drop of acid, eating its way to the center, too deep now to flush away.

The sorceress felt the warmth of the general’s released breath tickle her throat. The sorceress made a satisfied hum, low in her throat, mercilessly holding her spellbinding kiss.

The spell moved slowly, so slowly. It wended through the hard resistance of Celes’s foundation and the thick gelatin of her despair. It crept into the wreckage of her grief. The despair grew from the fractured memories of loved ones and adventuring companions now lost to her. The despair made it hard for the spell to do its subtle work.

This wouldn’t do.

The general felt the ribbon plunge into the sticky center of one ball of despair. It found the brash smile of the airship pilot, the memory of standing on the deck, watching the dawn’s light slant through clouds.

The ribbon curled around the memory like a snake. Pink tendrils wrapped around the memory-airship, splintering its hull. Pink lines of power filled the pilot’s smiling mouth, plugged his nostrils, choking him. The ribbon wrapped and wrapped, cocooning, entombing the memory.

The general felt it and did nothing.

The ribbon seemed to flex in slow motion, bulging with effort, containing a muffled groan of voices and splintering wood. It squeezed and squeezed, and with a violent spasm, the memory imploded.

Cut off from its source, the slime of despair thinned around the memory. The ribbon of magic lapped at it, washed it away. It felt warm, to Celes, like warm, cleansing water behind her eyes. Pink-gold light filled the void left in the memory’s destruction. It pulsed… and birthed new ribbons, new hungry traceries of enchantment, plunging deeper into the fog of the general’s dimming mind.

The general sighed. Muscles relaxed in her throat and back, tension points she had carried without thought for years. The sorceress purred in response, letting the kiss linger, burn, dissolve. In the general’s mind, more ribbons of magic lapped at her foundation, tasting and caressing, subtle tongues that found cracks and pressed deep inside them. They widened the faults, made homes in them, as a tree’s roots might crack through stone.

Other ribbons of magic dipped into the toxic lake of the general’s despair, finding at its heart more memory pearls. They crept in, like snakes into bird nests, and coiled.

In her dressing room at the opera house, Celes spoke in fiery pique at their plan to draw in the pilot. Or… she tried. In the memory, a thread of pink light snared her throat. As she choked, another coil touched her cheek to turn her head toward a mirror. As more ribbons closed in around her, the memory could only admire her reflection.

Celes looked up in her cell, hearing the _snick_ of a picked door. It cracked open, revealing not Locke, but a slow cascade of pink and gold ribbons, reaching for her. They embraced her like lovers while the memory flared and burned away in the sorceress’s magic.

Every memory corrupted in the pink light of the sorceress’s enchantment brought with it a wave of relief, flushing away the sticky weight of the general’s misery. Celes felt new thickets of ribbons grow in the hollows that remained, linking with the magical lattice “outside” her mind, the spell reinforcing itself, fueled by the sorceress’s patient, lingering kiss. The foundation at Celes’s spiritual core was… gummy now, not breaking, but softening, yielding to make a home for the garden of heart-stealing compulsion the sorceress planted a moment at a time.

Memories choked in a silent tide of pink, surrounded and squeezed until they burst like fireworks and fled into nonexistence. One last source of misery remained, rooted tightly to the foundation: the general’s memories of Cid, the gruff kindness of the man who raised her, his worried look as she assented to the Magitek infusion process, his… body, when at last she could not save him from a slow, wasting death.

Celes let out a muffled noise, halfway to a sob, desperately eager to rid herself of the pain. The magic poured into the memory in a vast, smothering tide.

The sorceress pulled away, breaking the kiss with a faint pop. The shape of the sorceress’s painted lips lingered on the general’s forehead, glimmering gold. The sorceress watched Celes open her eyes.

“Well?” the sorceress said.

In answer, the general’s lips parted. A soft fog of pink slipped out, trailing to join the miasma around the two women. The general stretched like a cat, sank her head down to nestle deeper into the sorceress’s lap.

The sorceress giggled. “I don’t believe it. I actually did it!” Celes blinked once, unconcerned, awash in magically-enforced peace.

“I did it. A Magitek Knight is mine. All mine,” the sorceress said. She gathered the general’s hair close to her scalp in a closing fist. Celes moved her head wherever the sorceress tugged, pliant now.

“Mmm,” the sorceress said, drawing triumphantly on her cigarette holder. “You’ll never be free again.” She lifted the enspelled general’s head, then kissed once more - this time on the lips. Her tongue teased open the general’s mouth before she exhaled hot smoke directly into Celes’s lungs.

She broke the kiss, and giggled again as the general coughed helplessly, unformed blurts of pinkish smoke jetting from her mouth and nostrils.

“Oh, you’ll have to get used to this,” the sorceress said. “You’ll never breathe free air again.”

“Hurts,” Celes murmured, coughing once more.

“I don’t care,” the sorceress purred. Spirals of smoke coiled around her face like pink serpents.

“Just…” Celes started, blinking her watering eyes. “Wait, just... just let me-”

“Choke,” the sorceress said.

She played a game with the fallen general. Her gloved hand slid around Celes’s throat, squeezing into red, inflamed flesh, squeezing her windpipe shut. The general’s body tensed - and then the pink ribbons choking her mind coiled with a constrictor’s speed around her spine, pulsing comfortable weakness into resisting limbs.

“Kkkh-” Celes’s mouth opened for air that would not come. Her face began to flush. Her head quivered from the force of the sorceress’s grasp.

“Choke,” the sorceress told her again. Celes’s face began to purple. The sorceress smiled -

-and let go. Again, the general coughed, drawing in ragged gasps. The sorceress waited for her, purring smoke down into her face, forcing her to breathe it in. The ribbons around Celes’s mind quivered in sympathy.

She coughed, trying in vain to turn toward pristine air -

A gloved hand clamped around Celes’s throat once more.

“Choke,” the sorceress said.

This was the fate Celes had accepted. She closed her eyes, clenched her teeth… but did not attempt to pull free from her tormentor’s grasp.

“Choke.”

The sorceress released Celes and poured another cruel exhalation into the general’s face as she strained for breath.

“Choke.”

With every round, the sorceress bore down on Celes’s throat until threads of grey swam at the periphery of her vision. Unconsciousness beckoned, again and again. The sorceress always released her prey before she faded out, and always rewarded her with another soft jet of smoke, pouring from smirking lips.

“Choke.”

Celes’s face was blotchy red from the slow torture. She let out tearing coughs, her body reflexively attempting to protect her from the sorceress’s poisonous assault. The sorceress wrinkled her nose.

“You’re making too much noise,” she said. Celes drew a shuddering breath between coughs.

“I-”

The sorceress slapped Celes once, twice - and with an arcane flourish, slapped her a third time, cursing the general with silence once more.

“Shhhh,” the sorceress said. Ensorcelled, Celes made a parody of coughing - shoulders bunched, mouth open, chest hitching with the effort - but no sound emerged.

The sorceress slapped her again.

“This is what you chose, and you’ll accept it with grace.”

Another slap, hard enough to draw tears.

“I will teach you grace,” the sorceress said. Celes felt her captor’s gloved hand linger on her cheeks, the velvet fabric of her touch absorbing the first of her tears. She spasmed through another silenced cough. The sorceress rewarded her with another vicious slap.

“You will accept my gifts with grace,” the sorceress said, peremptory.

“Now….”

Her hand drifted down to touch the general’s throat. The sorceress poured the next word, let it drizzle like warm honey over the captive's receptive soul.

“Choke.”


	4. Chapter 4

Celes choked.

Time blurred. She didn’t lose consciousness, but she lost time. If she could see her reflection, she would be shocked at the inflamed redness of her cheeks, the broken blood vessels in her eyes… her tortured, abused throat, now a garden of violet bruises, pain buttons for her captor to squeeze and squeeze while she controlled Celes’s breathing.

She would be shocked at the placid expression on her own face, in between coughing fits.

“Choke…”

The word punctuated another circuit in her spiral downward. She couldn’t help but gasp and cough in magically-enforced silence. And the sorceress would not stop.

“Choke.”

Strangle. Release. Gasp. Puff. Smother.

“Choke.”

Squeeze. Reprieve. Torture. Cough.

Choke.

The sorceress noticed Celes’s rune blade pulsed blue every time her fingers dug into the general’s throat. It shone in sympathetic outrage. If it could, it would leap into Celes’s hand.

The sorceress smiled around the stem of her cigarette holder, drawing in another puff.

Even under enchantment - a spell that only gained purchase because Celes chose to allow it - the bedrock of her sense of self remained inviolate. The spell riddled the general’s core with a spiderweb of cracks, but could not break it.

Yet.

She released Celes, smothering her with another delicate, inescapable puff. She waited through the general’s mercifully silent coughing fit.

She would just have to erode the general, like the wind and rain wears down a mountain.

“Choke,” the sorceress said. This time, Celes lifted her chin, a fractional movement, offering her tortured throat.

The sorceress smiled wider.

\--

Time passed. Hours or days.

The sorceress had stopped smiling. Celes couldn’t tell if she still said

_ choke _

or if she only imagined the word now. The sorceress wouldn’t even look at her now. Haughty, disdainful. She strangled Celes like someone might tear up the corner of a sheet of paper. Something to pass the time.

The sorceress exhaled smoke from her nose, soft, twinned plumes that flowed silently over the general’s face, drawn in with every gasp. The sorceress didn’t even look at her while Celes smothered and coughed.

A perverse part of Celes’s mind missed the attention. She wanted the sorceress to look at her.

_ choke _

She wanted the sorceress to notice her. Celes made no sound under the magically enforced silence. She took the punishment. It made her feel light. It distracted her from the weight of the despair she felt before accepting the sorceress’s devilish bargain.

It felt good to be light again. It felt good to

_ choke _

be noticed.

She saw the sorceress draw on her cigarette holder again, head turned in profile, a silhouette of decadent elegance.

She wanted the sorceress to notice her. Celes blinked, trying in vain to clear her vision. Starved of air, the greyness in the periphery of her vision would not entirely recede. The only thing she could see clearly was the length of the sorceress’s arm, the contour of her shoulder and neck, her haughty face, wreathed in the fog that flowed from her mouth and lips with every puff.

Celes wilted under her captor’s grasp. She knew the sorceress would release her, only to smother her in smoke again. She knew her sudden neediness was the product of an enchantment. But she needed the sorceress to look at her again.

Celes wilted and choked. The grey rolled in behind her eyes, the leading edge of consciousness… and then the pressure eased. Here it came. She heard the soft hsssssss of smoke exhaled from her captor’s nose, felt its toxic warmth as it flowed eagerly into Celes’s gasping mouth.

She needed the sorceress to look at her. Tears leaked from her eyes - not from emotional distress, but as a byproduct of the pain the sorceress gave her. It made her feel so light. The pain crowded out her despair. She was so grateful. Celes needed to show her gratitude.

She held in the secondhand toxins. She clamped her mouth closed, felt her throat and lungs hitch. She fought down the reflex to cough.

The sorceress lifted an eyebrow. She glanced down at Celes from the corner of one contoured eye. She paused for another elegant puff of smoke. The reprieve from the cycle of strangulation felt like a gift.

The sorceress’s mouth popped free of the holder. She looked away from her conquest.

“Choke,” she said dismissively, squeezing Celes’s throat again through a bored exhalation. The sorceress’s gloved fingers sank easily into the fallen general’s bruised flesh.

The dull pain felt like a yoke, like a collar. Celes choked in silence, eyes leaking tears while her mind swam in the softness of pink ribbons. The fallen general looked up at her captor. She felt so light. The torment and magical compulsion fit into the empty spaces of her heartache like the tumblers of a lock yielding to the teeth of a key.

She couldn’t breathe. She was so, so grateful. She knew the sorceress was testing her. She wanted to see if the last step in their dance was a fluke, or something Celes could repeat.

Celes opened her mouth, the beginnings of blue pallor staining her lips. She waited for permission to breathe.

The hand lifted. The sorceress sighed an imperious plume of smoke from her nose, cascading down into Celes’s face, smothering her as she breathed it in.

The sorceress turned to watch, her gloved hand resting light on the general’s sternum. Celes met her tormentor’s dispassionate gaze. Her lungs and throat burned. Everything hurt.

She felt so light.

Celes waited through the hitching in her chest, conquering her cough reflex. Her tear-stained, bloodshot eyes held the sorceress’s gaze through the swirling miasma.

The sorceress smiled.

“Good girl,” she said-

-Celes shivered, and a new crack split its way through the stone-heavy foundation at the core of Celes’s being. The pink ribbons of the sorceress’s spell slid languorously into the fault, licking and testing its sharp edges. Compromising.

Softening.

The sorceress let her hand rest, a pause in her dance with Celes. Mute-magic stole the sound of Celes’s ragged gasps for poisoned air. She soothed Celes’s neck while the general recovered… then pressed her thumb into the largest of the deep purple bruises she had inflicted.

Celes realized she was smiling.

“You can be taught,” the sorceress said. She twisted her thumb, grinding into ravaged skin, shrieking nerves.

Celes’s eyes fluttered.

“I promise I will be patient with you,” the sorceress crooned. “We can mend your old wounds together. I will be so patient while you learn. No matter how many times I have to repeat my lessons, I will be patient for you.”

The fallen general’s eyes gaze drifted away from her captor to light on her runic blade, propped carelessly against a stone wall. Swimming in pain, she did not immediately recognize the weapon. It spat fierce, blue light. It wanted to draw out the magic that poisoned its master. If it could have, it would have leaped through the air into Celes’s hands.

“Look at me,” the sorceress said. The lazy, pink ribbons lapping at Celes’s mind tightened, squeezed. Celes obeyed, feeling chagrined.

_ I’m sorry,  _ she mouthed, her words devoured by mute-magic.

“I need you to do something for me now,” the sorceress said. She seized Celes’s jaw with one hand, using the other to lift her cigarette holder to her haughty lips.

Celes nodded. She knew what she had to do. She saw the sorceress draw on her holder, saw the instrument flare with soft, evil light. Her mouth parted. Pink smoke drifted out, and up, into her nostrils, as she inhaled.

Celes opened her own mouth into the shape of a soft “o” as the sorceress exhaled her command in her captive’s face.

“Choke.”


End file.
